It's the often used "straw man" tactic. Take a stack of straw, shape in what you conceive to be the opponents arguments, cloth it with misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and sometimes outright falsifications, and then attack the strawman as the genuine article. Like strawmen, that may be sufficient to scare off crows, but anyone with insight is going to see through the ruse.
I am reading through Marx critic of Max Stirner in the German Ideology. Much of Marx's criticism revolves around this tactic that Stirner used to attack communism. Stirner used a couple of sources to invent his own brand of communism, and then proceeded to attack the false invention of his own making. The "strawman" tactic has been in existence since the Greek sophists starting teaching their pupils how to defeat their opponents in public debates.
grs
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